50 Pfennig - Hainitz Grützner and Faltis

Grützner & Faltis was a porcelain and earthenware manufacturer operating in Hainitz, Bohemia — a region whose industrial villages relied heavily on privately issued notgeld during the economic disruptions of the early 1920s when small-denomination Reichsmünzen essentially vanished from circulation. These zinc pieces were struck by the firm primarily to make change for workers and local transactions, a common but legally ambiguous practice that Austrian and Czech monetary authorities periodically moved to suppress.

Zinc was the default emergency metal: cheap, available, and deeply unpopular with the public, who knew it corroded quickly.